Extraordinary Ordinary

Recovering Neatnik

Those who know me best — especially my husband — do not believe I battled neatnik neurosis during my childhood. Sharing a bedroom with my sister, who suffered from chronic clutteritis, I developed OC tendencies in self-defense. My dolls stayed in their bed — cute, clean and quiet — until I wanted to play. Stuffed animals lined up in military order on the bed. I liked clean, shiny, bare surfaces, including floors, bureaus, and walls. As a teen, I kept my organized closet full of freshly-ironed clothes.

Life in an Indiana University dormitory cured me. Forever.

Perhaps my newfound maturity added to my messy success. Perfect order seemed less essential when I had to choose between going out Friday nights and cleaning my room or doing laundry and ironing. Besides, nobody at college had ever heard of an iron. Some had never heard of laundry.

I also credit much of my lifetime recovery to my three children. Gifts from God, they drove my neatnik tendencies away forever. No clean, shiny, bare surfaces appeared in our house for a couple of decades.

True, a period of danger ensued when they left home. Without their loving, anarchic presence, I might have succumbed once again to this terrible affliction. But they loved their old mom and, out of pure concern, left behind sufficient junk to defeat my tidy demons.

Now my grandchildren have joined their parents in concern for my well-being. The spare rooms bulge with toys I gave away 15 years ago, then re-bought at garage sales. An inflated monkey I purchased for fun days at the beach then hid to keep my grandchildren from fighting over it. Stacks of free cereal box books. A fuzzy Frosty the Snowman and Petey the Penguin, still in their 70-percent off package, bought to wiggle, jiggle and delight my grandchildren this coming Christmas. Or maybe they were supposed to thrill the kids five Christmases ago?

Even more touching, my in-laws joined in the fight to end my obsessive-compulsiveness forever. Not long ago they visited us, bringing my husband’s childhood scrapbooks and his favorite deer farm drinking glass, preserved from those exotic vacations in Hayward, Wisconsin.

With all this family support, I won’t see clean, shiny bare surfaces until heaven.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a neatnik or a clutter queen (king)?